Telescopes Are Windows To the Universe

Astronomers use them to study everything from the asteroids and planets in our own solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away in space and time. Though they bring the mysteries of the universe to us, their workings are anything but mysterious. They gather and focus light from objects in the sky, so that it can be directed into an instrument attached to the telescope, and ultimately, studied in detail by a scientist. At McDonald Observatory, we have several telescopes, built at various times since the Observatory's founding in the 1930s.

Here is an introduction to the telescopes that McDonald Observatory astronomers use for their research: